[school-discuss] LWCE report

[Jessica Sheffield <reann_arbre@yahoo.com>]

It's long overdue, but between Mardi Gras and the Olympics, my brain
has been occupied. ;) Here's a few notes on LWCE stuff.

Exhibit floor: Smaller than past shows, but not the doom and gloom
everyone said it'd be in the slow economy.  The .org pavilion was a fun
place to be.  All the projects seemed to get good coverage,
particularly the several LUGs who were in attendance.  As always, the
windowmaker.org booth kept everyone entertained (except possibly the
good people at the A.L.I.C.E. booth who found their area constantly
taking up the overflow from windowmaker).  OSEF was in a good position
traffic-wise - I never really got to talk to Harry because there was
always someone there with a question for him, which is good for OSEF :)

Schwag: Nothing that hadn't been given away at numerous other shows
EXCEPT the light-up pens from Intel (blue) and AMD (green).  We had fun
using these like lightsabers - photos scanned as soon as I get them
developed. :) Compaq also had penguin pez dispensers which were quite
cute.

Sessions: Didn't attend any of the regular sessions, as none of them
interested me terribly much except for Harry's, which of course
happened when I had other committments. (Such is always the way with
shows, it seems.)  The Linux in Education BOF was a terrific success. 
For those who may not know, Birds-of-a-Feather sessions or BOFs happen
after the show floor closes and the regular sessions are over;
therefore, they are historically low in attendance unless free food or
beer are offered as bribes. ;) Without any such bribery necessary, the
Linux in Education BOF hosted by Harry and myself had nearly 40 people
total, and no less than 25 at any time. By comparison, the Sourceforge
BOF attracted only a dozen people, and the security BOF with Jay Beale
had no more than twenty people, I'm told.  Everyone in attendance was
very excited about open source technologies in education.  Many
representatives of projects were there, as well as several members of
the press.  All in all I think it was a great session with lots of
opportunities for networking and promotion of Schoolforge.  Which leads
me to...

Schoolforge PR: I made hundreds of copies of various pieces of
Schoolforge press materials (electronic copies of which I'll copy to
this list as soon as I get access to the computer they're currently on
again), nearly all of which vanished the first day.  We scored points
with a delegation from the Brazilian government for having a copy of
the press release in Portuguese in the press pack I handed them :)
[Incidentally, said delegation had a presentation at one of the
sessions about what they're doing with Linux in some Brazilian schools,
which I caught the end of - looks pretty cool.]  People are *excited*
about Schoolforge - I got peppered with questions, none of which I was
qualified to answer. Wheeee. *grin* I directed everyone to this list,
so perhaps some of you here are people I met in New York. Hi! :)

That's about it for now.. as soon as I finish off the roll of film I
started at the show I'll have some photos online. Take care, all!

Jessica.

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